Going to a Vietnamese restaurant and ordering Pho is like going to a French restaurant and ordering a baguette. Sure, it’s a tasty meal, but you can do much better. Vietnamese cuisine is one of the finest in the world, but also...

DISCLAIMER: No animals were harmed in the making of this story. *Except for the cobra that I vanquished with scissors. Oh, and the rat that I smashed against a wall and ate. ************* “Take it!” Tai exclaimed, thrusting the...

“That’s too touristy,” shouted Jon, stabbing a spring roll with his chopstick and dunking it in fish sauce. “It can’t be that bad,” I shrugged. The Sapa Valley I’d seen in brochures was a bucolic paradise. It promised verdant r...

One of the most impressive works of fiction in the English language is your local Thai take-out menu. It’s as prickly and deceptive as a durian—much of it is Orientalist fantasy, much of the rest is culinary plagiarism. F...

Twilight had fallen over Tokyo, but the streets of Shinbashi district glowed as bright as day, pulsing in a rainbow symphony of lights. Amidst the heaving crowds of salarymen, neon-coiffed teenagers, and Kimono-clad mamasans, I...

OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER: This week I’m going to bestow you with a controversial travel tip that will allow you to eat better while spending less, however it might also potentially kill you, maybe sort of a little. Why would I enc...

The purpose of my self-destructive side trip to Chongqing was to eat at 夜富火锅, home of the spiciest hotpot on the planet (chunks of meat doused in a scalding broth of Sichuan chili and flower peppers, so spicy it’ll have y...

At first, I thought it was dead. At least in most corners of the globe, this is what you assume when something is placed before you on a platter and you are handed metal chopsticks. But this was not ‘most corners of the globe;’...

I have conquered the Silk Road. I’ve hid from Chinese guards in the starlit dunes of the Gobi. I’ve visited mud-thatched villages and seen old Uighur men as hairy as camels shriek in wonder and delight as they passed around a p...

If you’ve never woken up in the middle of the night to the sound of your own screams after suffering traumatic, reoccurring dreams the revolve around mutton fat, then you haven’t spent too much time in the Xinjiang province of ...